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In December 1983, a taxi pulls into what used to be the Gerhardt compound. A young man gets out and stands at the bottom of the steps — hands in his pockets, hair blowing in the late-autumn breeze.
He introduces himself as Charlie Gerhardt.
“I’m here about the house,” he says.
Tripoli stands imposing on the porch, flanked by Wes and Grady. He always tells them to come out when they have visitors. Grady thinks it’s pointless. Wes takes it way too seriously.
“What about it?” Tripoli asks.
Charlie straightens up. “I got a right to it. A legal right. It belonged to my family.”
Grady recognizes Charlie’s name. He stares at it every time he picks up the phone in the kitchen. It’s one of a dozen names written on the wall there, next to lines marking children’s growth. The wood is speckled with bullet holes that still haven’t been patched. An appropriate memorial for a family that’s mostly dead.
“Why now?” Tripoli wonders.
Charlie opens his mouth to respond, then pauses, squinting up to the porch. “Do … do I know you?”
“Never met,” Tripoli answers abruptly, and Grady suspects he’s lying.
The boss has transformed himself over the past four years. Long gone is the man with the bandage on his cheek who wielded a knife against their bullies and taught them how to fight. Even so, he’s sported a few more bandages since then.
It’s not just his face — he’s also fatter now, with shorter hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He even wears lifts in his shoes to look taller. But he still talks the same way, in that gruff tone with no words wasted.
When Tripoli first bought the place, he acted like he’d never been there. But there was a familiarity in the way he traveled between rooms, opened cabinets, removed photos from their frames.
And if he lived there before, with his old face, he would have known Charlie Gerhardt.
Tripoli repeats his question: “Why now?”
“I’ve been in prison, is the thing,” Charlie explains. “Four years. And I’ve been studying up on the law while I was in there. I know a lot, and I got a case. I thought I’d come talk to you first, before I go through the proper channels.”
Grady can’t picture this guy in prison. He wonders what it was he did. Then he does the math and realizes that Charlie couldn’t have been much older than him and Wes when he got locked up.
“In the kitchen,” Tripoli says, turning back toward the house. He tells Grady, “Check for weapons.”
Grady tilts his head, signaling for Charlie to come up onto the porch. As he climbs the steps, Grady notices his awkward gait — not quite a limp, but just a little off balance. When the guy finally removes his hands from his pockets, it makes more sense.
Grady glances at Wes, who apparently noticed it too. He's staring at Charlie with fascination.
After patting him down and finding nothing, Grady points him toward the kitchen. Then he remembers that Charlie used to live here, so he sure as hell doesn’t need directions.
Tripoli shuts the kitchen doors. The boss wants them there when visitors arrive, but he usually doesn’t let them in for meetings. Grady learned the hard way not to try eavesdropping, so he follows Wes upstairs.
While Tripoli talks to the visitor, Grady fills Wes in on what he missed outside.
What was his name? Wes signs.
They’re in his room, Wes on the bed and Grady slumped in the desk chair, looking like he’s about to fall asleep even though it’s barely noon.
C-H-A-R-L-I-E, Grady spells. Wes is on his feet by the fourth letter.
He crosses to the bookshelf and grabs a paperback — The Myth of Sisyphus. He opens it to the title page, on which is written, in a messy left-handed scrawl, the name Charlie Gerhardt.
This was his room? Grady signs, and Wes nods.
When they first moved in, Tripoli told them to pick their own bedrooms. The whole house was furnished and full of stuff the Gerhardts left behind. If it weren’t for all the dust, you’d think they were still living there.
Some of them were obviously girls’ rooms, with dressing tables and beads hanging over the door. Others had been shared by younger kids in bunk beds, their toys still scattered across the carpet.
Wes chose his room because it faced the front of the house, and because of all the books.
There were a few textbooks, but the rest seemed like a personal collection. A lot of them had notes scribbled in the margins, or passages highlighted in yellow. The pages were dog-eared, and the spines were broken, and they all had the same name inside: Charlie Gerhardt.
While Grady spent his free time listening to the Cure and leaning out his window to smoke, Wes was reading Charlie’s old books. He’d made it through a third of them by the time the man himself showed up on his doorstep.
Grady skims the back cover of the Camus in his hand. This looks depressing.
It is.
Can I borrow it?
Go ahead. Wes is still thinking about their visitor. Why do you think he was in prison?
Grady shrugs. Family business.
The implication is clear enough — that’ll be them one day. They may not be Tripoli’s blood, but when you get yourself mixed up in this shit, it’s only a matter of time before you’re dead or in jail.
Wes thinks maybe he can ask Charlie about it before he leaves. They should go downstairs and wait for him on the porch.
He goes to the window, pulling the curtain aside just in time to see Charlie getting back into his taxi below. Wes watches the car drive away toward the gates of the compound and disappear from sight.
Charlie lives alone in a little apartment downtown.
He’s used to being alone. He’s had four years to get acquainted with it.
He was locked up in the state pen when his lawyer told him his dad was dead. Then, before Charlie even had a chance to comprehend that news, he told him the rest.
Grandma and Uncle Dodd, both dead. Simone missing. Hanzee on the run. Before that, Mom and Uncle Rye and Grandpa. All gone. And here was Charlie, safe behind bars only because he couldn’t cut it.
Then there was the matter of the house.
It sat unused the first few years, while Charlie sat in jail. Since no one claimed it, it went to the state. Then this fella Tripoli bought it last year, no doubt for the same shady business it’s always been used for.
So Charlie got himself some books, and he started reading up on the law in his cell. His dad had wanted him to go back to school, and maybe become a lawyer, so he figured this was the next best thing.
He had a plan. As soon as he got out, he would go to Fargo and get the house back. He was no good at revenge, that much was clear, but maybe he could get a little bit of justice.
Tripoli wasn’t giving it up that easy, though. He told Charlie, in no uncertain terms, that the house was his now, and he best stay away.
Charlie sits at his kitchen table, eating beans and stale toast, and weighs his options. He thinks about Grandma and Dad and Uncle Dodd, all meeting in the kitchen over bread, talking about Kansas City.
Eventually, he decides that he’ll just have to go back and try again.
After a week, Charlie’s back at the compound. Wes is out chopping wood, so it’s just Grady on the porch this time. He pats the guy down and lets him through to the kitchen.
Twenty minutes later, Grady’s on his way down from his room when he sees Charlie leaving through the front door. He stops, leaning out of sight at the top of the staircase, as Tripoli talks to one of his men in the entryway.
“Tail him,” he says. “Get an address.”
The man nods and heads out. Grady resumes his descent, pretending not to have heard anything. The boss glares at him and walks away.
That afternoon, Tripoli calls him and Wes into the kitchen.
He directs them to sit down, then slides a piece of paper across the table. On it is the name Charlie Gerhardt, with the address for an apartment downtown.
“Tomorrow,” Tripoli tells them.
The other shoe just dropped, along with Grady’s stomach. He shows the paper to Wes, whose eyes widen almost imperceptibly.
“So, what, we scare him?” Grady asks, already knowing the answer.
“Not scare,” says Tripoli. “Dead.”
He turns to Wes then, raising his index finger and dragging it slowly across his own throat, from one ear to the other. Wes doesn’t react, just holds eye contact.
“Is it ‘cause he recognized you?” Grady wonders aloud.
He knows it’s the wrong thing to say as soon as he says it. Hell, even before he says it. But he must have a death wish, because he likes to test Tripoli sometimes. The boss would never admit it, but Grady’s pretty sure it impresses him.
Tripoli stands up, his chair scraping against the floor. He walks around to the other side of the table, leans down next to Grady’s ear, and says, “Head in a bag.”
Grady stares straight ahead as Tripoli leaves the room. “Message received.”
In the evening, Grady leans against the side of the barn, smoking a cigarette and digging his combat boots into the slush. Wes strides across the yard, fists tight at his sides.
We’re not doing it, he signs by way of greeting.
He feels like he’s been asked to kill a friend. Wes sleeps in the guy’s bed every night, reads his books, looks into the same mirror when he brushes his teeth. How is he supposed to keep living in that room, in that house, if they do this?
Grady blows smoke, shakes his head. We don’t have a choice.
Wes grabs him by the front of his coat. “Hey!” he sees Grady shout, cigarette falling from his mouth to be extinguished in the snow. Wes mouths no, right in his face.
Grady stares at him, eyes darting back and forth. Then his expression softens out of its scowl, and he sighs — Wes feels it and sees it in the cold.
“Okay,” he sees Grady say, so he lets go of him.
Grady adjusts his collar, glaring. He digs around in his pocket for another cigarette, which he puts between his lips without lighting it. He and Wes have another staring contest, before Grady finally lifts his hands to sign.
You’re gonna get us both killed.
Wes looks over his shoulder, back toward the house. The porch lights are on, but no one’s there except the night guard, gazing off in the other direction.
He turns back to Grady. I have a plan.
The day after Charlie’s second meeting with Tripoli, there’s a knock on his door.
Charlie looks through the peephole. He recognizes the two men — boys, more like — standing on the other side. They were at the compound when he visited.
Yesterday, Tripoli had actually tried to recruit Charlie, promising him a room in the house and money for an education.
“We could use a lawyer,” he said, same as Uncle Dodd.
Charlie refused, out of loyalty to his family. Tripoli told him there was nothing else he could do for him, so Charlie left again, back to square one.
If these two are knocking on his door now, it can’t be good. So he grabs his gun.
“What do you want?” he demands, opening the door just enough to point his pistol at the one closest to him — a dark-haired kid in a baggy black trench coat.
“Whoa!” the kid exclaims. Through the space in the door, Charlie can see him put a hand on his friend’s arm, presumably to stop him from reaching for his own weapon. “We come in peace!”
They seem to have forgotten that Charlie is a Gerhardt. That he just spent four years in prison. That he knows fellas like them don’t show up unannounced for coffee and chit-chat.
“Prove it,” says Charlie. “Put your guns on the floor.”
Slowly, the dark-haired boy reaches into his coat and pulls out his own pistol. He bends down to place it on the ground, then straightens up and nods to his partner, a taller kid in flannel and denim. He follows suit.
The boys put their hands up as Charlie opens the door wider. He kicks the guns into the apartment and under the nearby couch.
“Why didn’t you bring your little friend to the house yesterday?” asks the one in black, referring to Charlie’s gun.
“Because I came in peace,” he retorts.
The kid smirks at that. “Point taken.”
“What do you want?”
The one in the trench coat glances at his partner. “We’re here to help.”
Charlie blinks. That’s not at all what he expected to hear.
“Help with what?”
The kid rolls his eyes. “Let us in and we’ll tell you.”
Charlie isn’t really sure why, but he does.
He moves aside, and the two of them sidle past him into the apartment. Once the door is closed and he’s tucked his gun into the back of his jeans, he asks if they want coffee, because apparently it is that kind of visit.
The dark-haired kid makes an unusual gesture to his friend, who nods. It’s only then that Charlie understands — the taller one is deaf.
“Black,” the trench coat says, responding to Charlie’s offer. “Sugar for me.”
They sit down on opposite sides of the kitchen table while Charlie heats the water and spoons out the instant stuff. He keeps one eye on them as he goes, still not totally trusting.
“I’m Grady, by the way,” says the one who does the talking. “This is Wes.”
He nods to each of them. “I’m Charlie. But you already knew that.”
As he brings the coffee over to them, he sees Wes sign something to Grady. “He says he likes your books,” Grady translates.
Charlie looks around in confusion. The place is bare-bones — hardly a single book in sight, although he’d love to have them if he could afford it.
“He means the ones in your old room,” Grady explains. “He’s been living there. You left a lot of stuff behind.”
“Oh,” Charlie says in understanding. He looks at Wes. “I’m glad you like them.”
Wes must be able to read his lips, because he nods. An awkward silence descends as Charlie sits down in a chair between the two of them.
Grady takes a sip of coffee and crosses his arms on the table in front of him. “I’m gonna be straight with you, Charlie. We were sent here to kill you.”
Charlie nearly knocks everything over reaching for his gun, but Grady puts a hand up.
“Relax, we’re not gonna do it,” he says, then breaks into a toothy grin. “Probably.”
Charlie glances over at Wes, who remains impassive — brow furrowed and jaw set.
He huffs an incredulous laugh. “How old are you two, anyway?”
“Seventeen,” Grady responds easily.
Seventeen. Exactly how old Charlie was when his life changed in the back of a butcher shop. The bullet missed, but the butcher died later anyway. That’s what the papers said, at least.
Wes signs something to Grady then. It looks insistent. Grady sighs, in a way that suggests this was mostly his friend’s idea, and for some reason he chose to go along with it.
“We want to offer you a deal,” he says after another sip of coffee. “We tell Tripoli you’re dead, and you skip town. Never show your face in Fargo again.”
Charlie takes a moment to process this suggestion, then asks simply, “Why?”
It’s Grady’s turn to laugh. “Are you asking us why we’re not killing you?”
“Well, yeah. Kind of.”
Rather than answering the question himself, Grady signs something to Wes, who signs back to him. “You start to feel like you know a guy, living in his room,” Grady translates.
Even if Wes won’t say it, Charlie wouldn’t be surprised if this had something to do with their disabilities. He thought about it too, when he realized Wes was deaf. Remembering how hard he tried to prove himself to Uncle Dodd — reloading his gun one-handed, shooting into the cold.
He wonders how it’s been for Wes. At least he has someone looking out for him.
“Look,” Charlie says, leaning forward. “I came here to get that house. I got a case.”
“No, you don’t,” Grady replies curtly. “Not against Tripoli. Not if you wanna live.”
Charlie tries to respond, but Grady talks over him.
“Why do you even want it?” He sounds genuinely confused. “It’s a shithole, you know. There’s a leak in my room, and Wes thinks he saw a ghost.”
“It’s the principle of the thing.”
Wes taps on the table to get Grady’s attention, apparently not catching what Charlie said. Grady takes a second to think of the right sign. Wes shakes his head and responds, pointing at Charlie in the midst of his gestures.
“What did he say?” asks Charlie.
“He said you should do something with your life,” Grady tells him. “And I agree, man. Become a lawyer if you’re so good at it. Don’t risk everything for a house you don’t even want.”
Charlie sits back in his chair. It’s ironic, hearing that he should make something of himself from a couple of teenage hitmen. But he supposes they do have a point.
He went to prison because he pushed his way into something he didn’t have the stomach for. Now he’s sticking his nose into it again, still trying to prove something. Only this time it could cost him his life.
He’s got a second chance, so he should use it for something good. Helping people.
“You fellas can, too, you know,” Charlie offers. “Do something with your lives, I mean. It’s not too late for you.”
He turns to Grady, and instead of the usual glower or manic smile, he actually sees sadness there. “Yeah,” the kid says. “It is.”
Charlie can’t bring himself to agree with him, even though he’s probably right. For as much as Charlie has lost, at least he has a way out.
He chews his lip. “What happens if I say no?”
Grady just gives him a look.
“Right,” Charlie says, catching his drift. “No way around it, I guess.”
Grady signs something to Wes, who looks pleased. They stand up from the table, almost in unison. Charlie notices that they both push their chairs back in.
“You’ll wanna get far away from here,” Grady advises. “By at least a few states, so he doesn’t come across your name in the paper.”
“When should I leave?”
Grady shrugs. “Yesterday.”
Charlie almost doesn’t ask his next question, but curiosity gets the better of him.
“What are you gonna tell Tripoli?”
Grady is fishing in his pockets for his sunglasses. “That we put you in the trunk, drove you to a lake, and dropped you through the ice.”
He says it like he’s describing what he had for breakfast. Charlie can’t decide if it’s weird to thank your hitmen for not killing you. He ultimately opts against it.
They retrieve their guns from under the couch before they go. As they’re heading out the door, Wes signs something to Grady, who asks Charlie, “What were you in prison for?”
“Attempted murder,” Charlie replies. When Grady raises his eyebrows, he adds, “I botched a hit.”
Grady translates for Wes, then turns back to say, deadpan, “What a coincidence. That’s exactly what we’re doing right now.”
He dons his shades and walks out. Wes follows, but not before patting Charlie on the shoulder. His hand is warm and heavy, and it feels like a friend’s. Wes nods, once, and then they’re both gone.
Charlie shuts the door. “Okay, then.”
Sometime in the ‘90s, Wrench and Numbers get an assignment in New Mexico. It’s the farthest away from Fargo they’ve ever traveled.
They’re driving through Colorado, itching for a rest stop, when they pass a billboard on the highway advertising a familiar name. Numbers notices it first, and he nudges Wrench from the passenger seat.
Charlie Gerhardt, Attorney at Law, reads the sign, above a photo of a man in his mid-thirties, sporting a gray suit and a dark mustache.
Below that, three words: I Can Help.
Wrench and Numbers smile at each other as the billboard slides out of view.
Detour? Numbers signs.
Wrench pulls off at the next exit.